yeah

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Tuesday, 12 October 2010

Our (first) three open questions on Lord Browne's report (send us your questions to add!)

1) What kind of qualifications or merits has Lord Baron Browne of Madingley to carry out an allegedly “independent” review of the university tuition fees system?We acknowledge that someone who:a) was the Chief Executive of BP;b) had never spent one day of his professional life dealing with educational issues before;c) earned about 5 million pounds a year;is the most appropriate person to understand the problems faced by girls and boys coming from “ethnic minorities” and working-class background who want to enter universities with 10,000-pound-a-year fees

2) What criteria will implement Lord Browne (or whoever else) to decide what courses "are important to the wellbeing of our society and to our economy” and then have to be publicly funded?We assume that the priority will be to fund coursesa) explaining how to make the bankers of the City of London pay back those 800 billion pounds that the government gave them in 2008;b) teaching the managers of BP how to prevent accidents such as the Texas City refinery explosion (2005) or the Deeper Water explosion (2010).

3) How is possible that in continental Europe university fees are much lower than in England (and that in some parts of Germany, for example in Berlin, students pay no fees at all)?Why are people in England much more class-aware than in continental Europe?Is there any linkage between the two phenomena?We recognize that Lord Browne’s review would bring about the marvelous result of reinforcing once more the prestigious “old school ties” of the English aristocracy, preventing the coarse mob of the working-class suburbs from mingling with it.